Leave it to Rich Little to bring down the temperature in the combative U.S. capital.

WASHINGTON–Leave it to a Canadian to bring down the temperature in the combative U.S. capital.

Way down.

Shtick supplanted satire when veteran Canadian impressionist Rich Little took on the very tough job of prying laughs from the Washington political and journalistic elite and a smattering of Hollywood faces at the black-tie event of the season Saturday night.

It might have been the first time a headliner for the White House correspondents' dinner opened with a couple of Canadian jokes.

But given the response Saturday night, it's almost certain to be the last.

Little's Canadian content turned the Washington Hilton ballroom decidedly chilly, not unlike a January Saturday night in Estevan.

The Ottawa-born Little tried to haul the annual dinner back to the '80s, not just with a litany of impressions of dead and former presidents, but with his middle-of-the-road, polite, sanitized topics.

No jokes about Iraq or shots at George W. Bush, although he road-tested a couple of those at a reception at the Canadian embassy Friday, then drew some disappointed groans when he announced he would not use the jokes at the dinner, no matter how innocuous they were.

Little was given the podium for the first time here in a generation because he is the anti-Stephen Colbert. The Colbert Report host won continent-wide acclaim for a very tough send-up of the president and the press corps a year ago, but drew boos and scattered walkouts from those who had strolled down the red carpet to attend the dinner.

Colbert skewered reporters for forgetting their job was to type up what the press secretary told them, and he said he admired Bush for rebounding from every setback with the world's most lavishly staged photo ops.

Too close to home, it was decided, so there was none of that Saturday night.

"You can jab, but you have to be respectful," Little said before the dinner.

That, he said, was where Colbert crossed the line.

So, he opened his routine by announcing he would not try to score any political points.

"I'm just here tonight trying to make enough money to get my relatives out of Canada," Little said.

He then turned to a marginal impression of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, lamenting that Canadians were pouring across the border taking away Mexican jobs.

Then he trotted out an old chestnut about Saskatchewan hunters arguing over whether the tracks they had spotted in the snow were moose, deer or elk tracks.

While they were arguing, they were hit by a train.

(They were train tracks, Little felt compelled to explain when the joke was met with stony silence.)

"And you thought Colbert was bad," he said.

Little did not have to compete with Bush for laughs.

The U.S. president, whose finely honed sense of comic timing at these events was never slowed by deaths in Iraq, sombrely told the audience last night he would not attempt humour out of respect for those who had lost loved ones at the Virginia Tech massacre.

Little, a 68-year-old Las Vegas resident who left his native country decades ago, foreshadowed some of his difficulties, allowing before the dinner he did not think he was playing to a crowd known for its belly laughs.

At least he kept his classic John Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson impressions at the embassy, where he confessed his biggest concern was that people would say he was funnier at the Canadian embassy than the dinner.

He was funnier at the embassy.

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